iPhone Web Development Guidelines

[MacRumors]

Univeristy of Washington's Emerging Technology group published notes from Apple's Developing Web Sites for iPhone session from WWDC last week. The blog entry provides some interesting information for users and web developers alike about the iPhone's capabilities, and has been summarized below.

Apple listed what the iPhone offers for websites:

Removed per Apple's Request

A few iPhone size limitations / restrictions are noted in developing for the iPhone:

Removed per Apple's Request

Apple recommends the following design considerations:

Removed per Apple's Request

Apple's iPhone comes out on June 29th, 2007. At WWDC, Apple announced that Web-based applications will be the only way for 3rd party developers to produce applications for the iPhone.

 

[yoman]

interesting. It sure sheds light on a few things.

 

[mikeinternet]

...iPhone size limitations / restrictions are noted...

why would any of this be limited?

 

[Grimace]

rockin' -- let's see this thing go!

 

[Eric1285]

Haha, 10mb max per page? Who's going to wait all day for 10mb to load over EDGE? Bit overkill if you ask me, but certainly not unwelcome.

 

[ppc_michael]

5 second limit to JavaScript: sooo say you're doing something in which AJAX sends data to the server and receives a response. Does this mean that if the round-trip takes more than five seconds, the application will hang?

 

[DVNIEL]

Scroll wheel events?

 

[A Pittarelli]

i wonder how many apps, webpages and such can be run concurrently

 

[DocStone]

It's a hand held device. I am excited, despite the limitations.

 

[Random Ping]

Univeristy of Washington's Emerging Technology group published notes from Apple's Developing Web Sites for iPhone session from WWDC last week.

Apple should post an official set of guidelines.

I am sure a lot of people want to make sections of their sites optimized for the iPhone, and with so many sites driven by databases (i.e., MySQL), scripting languages (i.e., PHP), and separating style from content (CSS), maintaing an iPhone-optimized site shouldn't be too hard for many.

 

[CoreWeb]

5 second limit to JavaScript: sooo say you're doing something in which AJAX sends data to the server and receives a response. Does this mean that if the round-trip takes more than five seconds, the application will hang?

Most likely an Ajax request will use an asynchronous request, meaning that Javascript will not actually be running while waiting for content to download from the server. Instead, when the data is retrieved Safari would call a Javascript function. Even if it was a synchronous request, Safari might consider the "halted" javascript to not actually be running, meaning the 5 second limit would not apply.

 

[angelneo]

10MB max html size? I don't think that's a restriction, some phone have like 10KB or 100KB max html size......

 

[mrpiddly]

NO FLASH/JAVA!!!!!!!!!

 

[sieken]

too much iPhone

Is there anyone with me who is also extremely sick of hearing about the iPhone? Isn't there anything else to talk about? I know people are excited and all, but c'mon... please?

 

[artalliance]

NO FLASH/JAVA!!!!!!!!!

can you make it a bit more clear what you are trying to convey?

 

[Furgster]

ahh, i cant wait only 10 more days

 

[Stella]

> Javascript limited to 5 seconds run time

What sort of crap is that?!

 

[Asar]

Is there anyone with me who is also extremely sick of hearing about the iPhone? Isn't there anything else to talk about? I know people are excited and all, but c'mon... please?

no, iphone is all that matters for now

 

[citi]

I know the iphone is the most wanted product on the planet, but this first itteration leaves a lot to be desired.
full featured internet?
No 3G?
No java
No Flash
4 or 8 gb max storage
no external memory
oh and this line:

new telephone links allows you to integrate phone calls directly from your webpage. remember this is only on safari.

That's a load of crap, my moto q and pretty much any other ms smartphone does this. Plus, we still don't know how the keyboard is going to work out, and if will it last, like say if I drop my phone. My ipod is durable, but will this one be?

Bottom line is apple will do what they always do...release this and then 6 months later, release the one that everyone wants.

 

[CoreWeb]

> Javascript limited to 5 seconds run time

What sort of crap is that?!

What sites do you know of that use more than 5sec consecutive run time? I hope no site that I've made... though I can understand that a few might run long Javascript routines, most sites run will run javascript several times for very short periods each time.

For instance, the "accordion" animation that Apple uses on their hot news page probably does not take even half second of consecutive javascript execution time. Instead, it runs a script which takes probably under a tenth of a second to run, several times, each time changing the size of a part of the web page.

Apple's Hot News Page

I'm talking about the panels at the right, and what happens as you hover over "Top Albums," "Top Movies," etc.

 

[Fearless Leader]

well im pissed kinda... 5 seconds for javascript wish they'd reveal a bit more about that.

 

[Counter]

Worry not people, it will be hacked and running Flash, Java, and snowflake animations in Javascript for longer than 5 seconds in no time!

 

[CoreWeb]

well im pissed kinda... 5 seconds for javascript wish they'd reveal a bit more about that.

For comparison purposes, the default limit on desktop Firefox is 10 seconds, I believe. And I'm pretty sure this is consecutive time, not total time. It is simply to prevent crashes if the Javascript gets stuck in an infinite loop.

Edit: In addition, based off what I've read in my short Google search on Firefox's timeout, it was once 5 seconds. (But now the default is 10). The difference between Firefox and the iPhone browser will most likely be that in Firefox this setting is customizable (but you have to go to about:config and change it manually) and Firefox doesn't simply halt the script, but shows a dialog telling the user that a script is running to slow and asking whether to stop it or not. If the user decides not to stop it, and it is an endless loop, Firefox would (this is an educated guess) hang. As Apple wants the iPhone to be stable, they don't want to give the user a choice to do something which has a potential to crash the system.

 

[Counter]

well im pissed kinda... 5 seconds for javascript wish they'd reveal a bit more about that.

99% of pages on the net which use javascript (even extensively) need no more than a second. Javascript is mainly used for things which happen instantly. Animations with Javascript are POOP. It's not like the iPhone has a replacement for displaying animations (Flash, Java) but hey, this is rev A.

 

[artalliance]

I know the iphone is the most wanted product on the planet, but this first itteration leaves a lot to be desired.
full featured internet?

4 or 8 gb max storage

you are aware that this is way more than any current phone out there, right?